


Counting The Steps Back To Safe

by sapphire2309



Category: White Collar
Genre: Assault with a metal rod, Delirious Rambling, Gen, Post-traumatic amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2224482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal isn't feeling too great about this particular undercover op.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting The Steps Back To Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after 5X09. Diana is back for my peace of mind. Title from Perfume and Promises by Idina Menzel.  
> This is for the 'amnesia' square on my h/c bingo card.  
> Thank yous to hybridshade for helping me think this through. Reve, this wouldn't have ever been done without you and you know it. :) (reve last-minute-beta'd this fic.)

Neal snaps the clasp of the watch  _du jour_ shut. “Testing,” he says into the watch. He doesn’t want to come up with anything funny or interesting to say, so he doesn’t.

Diana nods.

Neal straightens his cuff.

Peter says nothing.

Diana gives in to the tension. “Be careful. We still don’t know exactly how dangerous Jim Wallace is and backup is five minutes away.”

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the speech became a necessary pre con – _sting_ – ritual.

“Technically, shouldn’t I be giving you the Be Careful speech? I mean, you’re the one with a baby.”

“Don’t even go there.” She’s smiling, but the threat isn’t lost on Neal. He shuts up.

Peter doesn’t even crack half a smile.

Neal gets up and opens the van door. Peter says nothing.

Neal hops out and has to resist slamming the door shut.

-:-

  
He’s waiting in the lobby of Wallace’s office.

He can’t help but twiddle his thumbs.

This whole thing feels off.

He can’t tell if something about the case is setting off any alarms because his entire mind is occupied with how all is not right with the world.

It’s amazing that where none of Peter’s warnings worked, a few days of complete and utter coldness have scared him straight.

“Mr. Wallace will see you now.” The receptionist smiles at him. He smiles back absently.

He doesn’t notice the elevator doors opening behind him as he walks into Wallace’s office.

“Jim.” Neal puts his hat down on the desk.

“You can call me Mr. Wallace.”

Neal looks up sharply. Every time he’s seen Jimmy Wallace, the man has been almost overbearing in his delight. Right now, he’s coiled to strike.

He doesn’t miss that.

“And I will, in return, call you Neal Caffrey.”

Neal tenses. His mind is twisting words and facts into something with a kernel of truth, something that might just save him if he starts talking soon enough.

The words come together just after his tongue stops responding to his brain’s commands.

Neal’s mouth opens and closes in an effort to form words. He’s more than slightly frightened - he can’t con someone if he can’t talk.

He turns to see what he heard behind him and comes face to face with a metal rod, newly emblazoned with blood.

His eyes widen even as his body slumps to the floor. They close as his cheek collides with the flooring.

-:-

  
“All teams move in!” Peter’s voice cuts through the stunned silence.

This has never happened before.

Diana can’t react (a term of her early return), the representative of the Harvard crew doesn’t know how to. The two of them continue to sit in silence while Peter pulls his gun out of the holster, gets out of the van and into the building, and prepares to break the door down if backup doesn’t get here soon enough.

It only takes a few seconds for tyres to come squealing around the corner.

-:-

  
A SWAT team combs the building and finds nobody. “Must have had an escape route ready,” is the only answer they can give Peter.

It’s not enough.

-:-

  
Neal wakes up with a headache, blood trickling down his neck and zip ties cinched tightly around his wrists.

His muscles are screaming in protest at the uncomfortable position.

He can’t curl his arms close to his chest (as if that’s going to do anything for the pain), so he pulls his knees up and rests his forehead on them.

He knows he should move, should get out of this place, but he seriously doubts that he’s coordinated enough to manage more than a few steps.

He closes his eyes and wishes that fainting could be on demand, he hurts that much.

-:-

  
Once he’s a little closer to sane, he can’t resist a little token struggling. It may not help get him out of the zip ties, but strangely, it eases some of the pain.

He looks around. He doesn’t know where he is, why he’s there, what he’s supposed to be doing. All of that is an annoying blank space somewhere in his memory.

But he does know that he wants out of this situation as soon as possible. With the zip ties, that’s going to be difficult.

Unless…

Neal twists his hand upwards to feel the cuff of his sleeve.

The cuff has a razor blade sewn into it – the rectangular kind, which looks innocuous but is deadly. It’s thin and malleable enough to conform to the curve of the fabric and sharp enough to slice their own way out when needed.

He forces the blade through the fabric and winces when it cuts into his palm. That doesn’t matter, though. He grips the blade in two shaking fingers and uses it to cut into the zip tie.

He cuts himself thrice more before he’s free.

-:-

  
Neal stumbles into the dank alleyway. He doesn’t want to go out into the street – the sun’s too bright.

He’s conscious of missing something. An anklet? No, that’s not possible, why would he wear an _anklet_?

He shoves the feeling aside, shoves the wall away and stumbles into the street. It’s the only way back to somewhere he might feel remotely safe.

He nearly collides with an old lady in a walker. She, instead of being concerned for herself, calls out, “Are you okay?”

Neal is terrified out of his mind.

She could be somehow tied to whoever got him into this situation. The walker could just be a prop, the grey hair and copious wrinkles faked.

She shifts her weight, possibly holding the walker with her hands, preparing to strike. Neal wonders if it’s a walker at all.

She’s definitely not an old lady taking a walk.

Neal runs.

-:-

  
Somehow, he lands up on the doorstep of a rather familiar house.

It’s a charming little thing, and according to the streetsigns, it’s on DeKalb Avenue. He thinks he knows the place. A stray tendril of the strange aura of safe surrounding the house reaches out for him and he follows unthinkingly.

The door poses a problem with an easy solution. He takes out a couple of lock picks that his captors either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t bothered with. He’s about to start picking the lock when he drops his tools and straightens up with a smile.

There’s a key in the fake rock two feet from his shoe.

He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he’ll take free knowledge where he can get it.

He’s aware of the silence even before he’s through the doorframe. No one’s home. The couch looks inviting, though.

He loosens his tie (he doesn’t particularly want to negotiate with it while trying to sleep), is happy that he left the jacket behind at the… wherever he came from, and collapses facedown into the couch.

From somewhere, the words _invasion of privacy_ occur to him. It’s an interesting phrase, he thinks. He vaguely wonders if the time he’ll probably have to do for it will be longer than the four years he spent in jail for… whatever he did.

The thought puts him to sleep immediately.

-:-

  
He wakes up with a start.

He leaves a few droplets of blood on his trousers as he reaches for his ankle.

It’s bare.

He isn’t wearing a watch either.

He stumbles towards the door, vaguely noticing that he’s in the Burke’s house, which happens to be deserted.

He wanders the streets absently, registering the pitch darkness somewhere in the back of his mind, keeping his eye out for the classic plus sign of a hospital.

-:-

  
He finds one eventually.

He walks into the emergency room, a little straighter than he’s been walking for most of the day, announces, “I need help,” and promptly collapses onto the floor.

He secretly enjoys the rush he creates. Then he thinks of something else. Something important. He came here for a reason.

They’re about to poke something, likely a sedative, into his arm, when he yells, “Wait, stop! Phone call, I need to make a phone call. Right now.”

Somebody (he thinks it’s a nurse) tries to reason with him. “Sir, your condition, while not critical, is quite alarming, and we need to move as fast as we-”

“You don’t understand! I will almost literally be a dead man if I don’t make this call. I have to call Agent Bur- Berrigan, right now, and tell her where I am, or they’re going to charge me with skipping on parole and they’re going to put me in prison for the rest of my _life_ and that’s not something I can deal with, so please. I need to make a phone call. Just one phone call.” His voice starts to break.

“Okay, okay. We’re wheeling you to the hospital’s landline, you can make the call from there,” one of the voices says.

Neal blinks, the easy victory somehow not enough. “You should also probably restrain me or something. I’m a parolee with no tracker and they call me a flight risk, so, you know-” He cuts himself off when he sees the phone.

It takes him three straight minutes to dial Diana’s number properly.

-:-

  
Diana’s holding a sleeping baby in one arm and turning the key with the same hand. The other hand is holding her head because that’s the only way her headache won’t explode out of it.

She can still hear Peter, livid, snapping orders at innocent agents, torn between wanting to find Neal and being absolutely furious at him.

Peter sat her down yesterday and told her whatever he knew about Neal’s latest misdeeds.

Oddly, she felt just a little bit of sympathy for Neal, despite whatever he did, enough to keep up a banter that left him unsuspecting. Not enough to absolve him of the very real crimes he committed.

The second she gets the door open, her phone rings and Theo lets out a single shriek and thankfully, nothing more.

She’s going to kill whoever’s on the other end.

“Berrigan,” she snaps.

“Hey, Diana!” Neal says cheerfully.

She’s _really_ going to kill him.

“What?”

“Oh, is this not a good time?”

“No, Caffrey, it’s not.” Wait a second- “Caffrey?”

“I thought you knew that. I’m the one with a sketchy memory here, Di.”

“Hold on a second, sketchy memory- Neal, what is going on?”

“I’m in a hospital because my brain is acting weird and I’m not on the anklet or a watch and you’re the only person I trust to see me like this who’s also allied with Big Brother.”

“You sound like Mozzie. And you seem to have forgotten that I have a baby.”

“Mozzie can babysit.”

“Of course he can.” She sighs and turns around to leave. “Which hospital?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. I’ll give the phone to the next person I see in some kind of uniform.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Can you not call Peter?” Neal sounds absolutely sober and serious.

“For now,” she hedges.

“Kaybye!” he says, too cheerfully. She exhales sharply. She’s still tempted, and there is a wrench in the trunk of her car…

-:-

  
She reaches the hospital without waking Theo up or having a complete breakdown, which she puts down as an achievement.

She unbuckles a sleeping Theo from his carseat, walks into the hospital, gets a room number from the receptionist and finds a peacefully sleeping Neal.

Not for long.

“Morning, Caffrey.”

Neal blinks and stretches. “Diana,” he smiles.

She eyes the restraints hanging off the sides of the bed.

“Oh, they brought those from the psych department, which I think is offensive in itself, and it was a little uncomfortable sleeping on my back, so I picked them. Or slipped them. I think it’s a combination of the two, really-”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

She sighs and sits down on the conveniently positioned chair. “The docs say you can leave if you’ve got somebody to keep an eye on you. But, we’ve got to wait for the Marshals to get here with an anklet first, and you have to stay cuffed to the bed for that duration of time. And yes, Peter knows, and yes, he’ll be here soon.”

Neal closes his eyes. He does not want Peter at his bedside.

“Now flip onto your stomach, I don’t want you making excuses later.”

She carried her spare pair of handcuffs, so she could cuff both his arms (at the forearm, his wrists had bandages wrapped around them) to the bed.

“Could you-”

“I’m not taking you home to play Nurse.”

“I was actually about to ask if you could call June. As much as I adore the prospect of going home with you.”

Diana manages a smile. “I can do that.”

“Thanks,” he says, and he sounds so sincere, and she’s not sure whether to believe him or not.

-:-

  
Peter gets Neal’s room number solely on the strength of his badge. He’s shaking, barely believing that Neal’s been found already, and about five doctors who pass him by ask him if he’s okay.

He finds Diana snoozing in a chair, Theo curled up against her, two sets of handcuffs on the bed and no Neal.

Thankfully, she wakes up before she starts hyperventilating. “Sit down, Peter,” she says firmly.

He sits on the handcuffs.

“Neal?”

“He’s okay. He seems perfectly fine, but that’s probably only on the outside. He went home with June. The Marshals dropped by with the anklet. It’s on his ankle now.”

“The diagnosis?”

“Moderate post traumatic amnesia, not as bad as most. They think the most severe symptoms had passed by the time he reached the hospital. They basically stitched him up and would have sent him home if he didn’t have to wait for the anklet.”

Peter begins to breathe like a normal person. “So he’s fine.”

“He’s fine, and you look like you could use that bed more than him.”

“No, that’s- that’s fine, I’ll just head home, now.”

-:-

  
Peter’s about to unlock his door when he notices the lock picks abandoned at his doorstep, and the opened fake rock with no key in it.

This could only be Neal, but…

The door isn’t open, thank God. He keys it open and searches his living room, stopping short at the couch.

There are bloodstains and an abandoned tie.

Neal was here.

He picks up the tie and runs his fingers over the silky fabric.

It’s oddly comforting that he ran here when he was in trouble. That he chose their house to run to, even though he was probably halfway out of his mind.

It eases some of the ache that’s been worrying away at his gut since Neal went missing.

Getting the bloodstains out of the couch is an entirely different matter, though.


End file.
